resource extraction

Last month, on April 8, the government proudly announced its new revamped Plan Nord. Premier Philippe Couillard's project, though much less ambitious than that of Charest's government, appears to be just as risky.

The government is intent on investing $2 billion to build infrastructure in the North in order to make it easier for mining companies, usually foreign-owned, to gain access to the resources. By 2035, some $20 billion will have been invested by Hydro-Québec on new projects to reinvigorate the North's economy. (It's worth mentioning that details regarding these investments have not been made available.)

(My name is Brad Hornick. I am male, a student and settler on Coast Salish Territories. Like Hedges, I have worked and travelled in war zones, and I am not an expert on issues of gender violence. I have lived and worked in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver, including working in a small capacity for one of the organizations listed below many years ago. The relevance of my response to Hedges is that I am on the State of Extraction organizing committee. All the views expressed within this article are mine alone.)

Sheila Watt-Cloutier is one of the most widely respected political figures to emerge from Canada's Arctic, and this potential was identified early on. When she was just 10 years old, she and her friend Lizzie were selected as promising future Inuit leaders and sent to live with a white family in the tiny coastal community of Blanche, N.S. Having grown up in Nunavik, Que., on dog sleds and in canoes, the young Watt-Cloutier loved new experiences and approached the long voyage south in the spirit of adventure. The girls were in for what Watt-Cloutier now describes as a "brutal shock."

News reports are heightening concerns about how C-51, the Harper government's so-called "anti-terrorism" legislation, could be used against people protesting against its extreme resource extraction agenda of tar sands expansion and pipelines.

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, Chris Hedges, is scheduled to give the keynote speech at an upcoming conference about resource extraction at Simon Fraser University (SFU). The State of Extraction, set to take place from March 27-29, 2015, aims to bring together Indigenous leadership, academics, artists, public intellectuals, activists, and the general public to address “the new face of resource capitalism in Canada… and the lack of debate about such issues.” Ironically, a “lack of debate” is precisely what some groups want.

Canadians are concerned about the impact of resource extraction on land and the irreversible destruction of precious ecosystems. Rural towns across the country are dealing with these issues of land use.

The Wheeler commission on fracking did its due diligence under difficult circumstances, except for the part where it further warped an already unhinged debate. It did this by toying with scenarios and declaring that even the middling one would provide a billion dollars a year in economic benefits, and royalties in the hundreds of millions a year for decades.

So the hyper-questionable idea will remain afoot, fracking ban or not: we are sitting on a fortune that we are too backward and obtuse to develop.

The Prime Minister is wrapping up his ninth annual trip to Canada's North this week. This year, like every year, the stealth Ski-Doo is loaded up with announcements.

Presents for everyone!

So what are women in Nunavut going to find in their stockings this year? The bulk of federal investments in economic development in the North are funnelled through the Canadian Northern Economic Development Agency, which has an annual budget of just over $50 million (although that number is projected to decline over the next few years). Much of that $50 million is currently directed towards resource development -- training for folks to work in the resource sector, infrastructure to get to the resources, research to tell us where the resources are.